Đức Tin và Sứ Mệnh

Leo McInerney

Trợ Lý Hiệu Trưởng- Đức Tin và Sứ Mệnh

Trường Marian College được may mắn với sự hiện diện của Sơ Brigid Arthur csb, tại họp

hội đồng của trường chúng tôi, đã được chiếu vào tất cả các lớp học vào cuối học kỳ trước.

Sơ Brigid, cựu hiệu trưởng của trường Marian, cũng là một trong những người sáng lập Dự án Người Xin Tị Nạn Brigidine Asylum Seekers Project (BASP). Hai trong số các Đội trưởng Phụng vụ của chúng tôi đã phỏng vấn Sơ Brigid, người đã chia sẻ một số kinh nghiệm lâu năm của bà khi làm việc với những người xin tị nạn. Nói ngắn gọn là, bà ấy cho chúng tôi biết rằng việc giam giữ vô thời hạn của những người sẽ tước đi những cơ hội đóng góp cho xã hội mà họ mong muốn trở thành một phần. Nó thay thế các hoạt động có ý nghĩa với sự sỉ nhục hàng ngày và sự phẫn nộ.

Các yêu cầu, được đặt ra cho Sơ Brigid, đã tăng đáng kể trong thời kỳ coronavirus. Bà ấy nói rằng nhiều người xin tị nạn đã mất việc, và họ không đủ điều kiện cho ‘Job Keeper’ hoạc ‘Job Seeker’. BASP đã chịu áp lực tài chính để hỗ trợ những người này thuê nhà và thanh toán các bill dịch vụ.

Thay mặt cho trường, các Đội trưởng Phụng vụ của chúng tôi hứa sẽ tiếp tục hỗ trợ BASP, một thành viên không thể thiếu của Bộ Kildare Ministries. Một buổi gây quỹ sẽ diễn ra vào giờ ăn trưa vào thứ Sáu ngày 31 tháng 7. Học sinh và nhân viên sẽ có cơ hội mua các mặt hàng thực phẩm và chúng tôi yêu cầu tất cả nhân viên và học sinh mang ít nhất một mặt hàng thực phẩm đến trường sẽ được chuyển cho Sơ Brigid và nhóm của bà.

Tôi đã bao gồm bên dưới một câu chuyện về công việc tuyệt vời mà BASP làm trong việc cố gắng hỗ trợ những người xin tị nạn của chúng ta.

With no one her own age to play with, Isabella spends her days watching children’s TV shows on her mum’s phone. Occasionally, she goes outside to play on a slide placed incongruously on a narrow strip of grass inside the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation detention centre (MITA). But mostly, mother and daughter stay inside, away from the risks of COVID-19. Their most regular visitors are Serco guards who do a headcount four times a day.

Despite the Australian government’s claim that there are no children in immigration detention, at least three little girls remain there. The father of one of them says, “With no one her own age to play with, Isabella spends her days watching children’s TV shows on her mum’s phone.”

Isabella is now 28 months old and has lived at the centre with her mother Huyen Thu Thi Tran, an asylum seeker, since the day she was born. The facility is in the suburb of Broadmeadows which is currently under lockdown due to an outbreak of COVID-19 in the area.

Huyen, 31, is Catholic and says she fled religious persecution in rural Vietnam in 2011. She landed on Christmas Island by boat and was detained for more than a year before being moved to community detention. In 2014 she ran away from the community housing in Adelaide, she says, after seeing other young Vietnamese asylum seekers in the same group being deported without warning. She was placed in MITA in November 2017 when she was four months pregnant. She has no criminal convictions.

Days before Isabella was born, Huyen was told by MITA staff that she had to sign a form saying her baby could stay in detention with her as a “guest” if she wanted to be able to keep and breastfeed her.

“I was scared they would take my baby away from me so I thought I had to sign that paper. I didn’t know what to do but I signed it because I wanted to make sure they let me keep my baby,” she says.

Last year, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said this action was “nothing more than an attempt on behalf of the authorities to circumvent the prohibition of detention of children in the context of migration”.

Paul Lee is Huyen’s husband and Isabella’s father. He lives a 15-minute drive away from MITA but he hasn’t seen his wife nor daughter since March. He is used to booking daily visits online and - after passing through metal detectors and having drug tests he is then able to spend two hours with his family in the centre’s visitor room, amongst other guests and guards.

However, the pandemic has stopped all that.

“It’s over three months now since I have seen my wife and my daughter,” the 33-year-old says. Paul is usually a quiet man but now gets visibly angry and frustrated by the lack of communication from authorities.

“There are no other children to play with Isabella in the detention centre and this puts a lot of stress on my wife and my daughter, and the only thing I can do is a phone call.,”

Paul came to Australia with his family from Mauritius in 2014 and is on a 457 visa. He works as a mechanic and met Huyen while she was in Melbourne. The couple married in 2017. He says, “It was love at first sight for me. My wife is very beautiful and a kind person. I thought to myself, ‘I really need to impress her!’”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton have repeatedly said there are no children in detention in Australia, something that frustrates Paul. “If you compare Australia to other countries, this isn’t right. To keep a mother and baby in detention when they have family support, other countries would never do this for years,” he says.

Along with Isabella, two Tamil sisters from Biloela in Queensland remain on Christmas Island. Paul hoped he’d be able to sponsor Huyen’s visa after their marriage but learned it was not possible because she arrived in Australia by boat.

For anyone wishing to make a donation, the Project Bank details are: Brigidine Asylum Seekers Trust Account: BSB: 083-004; a/c:56-924-6603 NAB